Four more men freed from flooded Laos cave after 10 days

By DPA, Psoted By TOE

Four men who were trapped in a flooded cave in Laos for around 10 days have escaped safely, a member of the rescue team told dpa on Saturday.

Josh Richards, a cave diver involved in the rescue operation, said the men managed to crawl out on their own.

“They did it themselves – we swapped the pumps, left the cave and [I] was about to head in when they emerged on their own,” Richards said.

Seven men became trapped after heavy rainfall flooded a cave they had entered to dig for gold in the mountainous Longchaeng district of Xaisomboun province on May 19. Other gold prospectors managed to escape and alert the authorities.

Five of the men were found alive on Wednesday, and had been waiting in a small chamber hundreds of metres from the cave’s entrance. One of them was successfully rescued on Friday.

A video obtained by dpa showed the other four men emerging from the cave complex one by one on Saturday to the cheers of the rescue workers. Exactly how they managed to navigate the narrow passages, lined with sharp rocks, was initially unclear.

Videos posted by rescue workers from inside the cave complex had shown experts crawling through tight tunnels, advancing only centimetre by centimetre.

Richards said pumping had helped to lower the water level inside the cave so much that the gold prospectors no longer had to dive. Rescuers were unsure how they were going to escort the men safely through the flooded passageways, as none of the miners had any diving experience.

Earlier on Saturday, Richards had told dpa that the risks of further rescue attempts were too high and that efforts had been paused until a 20-metre-long underwater passage connecting the chamber where the men were trapped to the rest of the cave system could be widened.

The four gold prospectors were carried on stretchers to ambulances where they would undergo medical examinations.

Rescue teams had previously said some of those trapped were suffering from skin problems caused by the damp environment, as well as stomach and intestinal complaints.

In messages to their families, the men had warned days earlier that they could not survive much longer in the chamber.

Despite the happy outcome for the five survivors, the rescue mission is not over yet, with two men still missing inside the cave complex.

Rescuers say they have already searched the majority of the extensive cave system and have so far found no trace of the missing men.

Several international specialists have been supporting the emergency services on the ground for days.

The Lao government requested the assistance of Thailand’s emergency services in particular, who gained international recognition during the 2018 rescue of a youth football team trapped inside the Tham Luang cave complex.

from The Times Of Earth https://ift.tt/yGkN21S